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Gay Marriage Is Extended Nationwide in Canada

TORONTO, June 28 - The House of Commons voted Tuesday night to extend marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples throughout Canada despite strong opposition from the Conservatives and a splintering of the governing Liberal Party caucus.

The vote sealed two years of provincial court decisions that gave same-sex couples the right to marry in 8 of 10 provinces and one of the three northern territories. When the Senate approves the measure, considered a formality, Canada will become the third national government, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to enact such rights.

Though the vote was largely symbolic, advocates for gay rights hailed it as a milestone because it was the first time a Canadian legislative body had voted to change the traditional definition of marriage beyond a union of a man and a woman.

"It's about the right to love," Réal Ménard, a Bloc Québécois lawmaker who is gay, said after the vote. "When you are in love, things are different, and everyone is entitled to that." The Conservatives promised to revoke the legislation if they won power in elections, which are expected early next year, setting up a potentially divisive political campaign in the winter.

Even before the vote, the Conservative Party leader, Stephen Harper, questioned the legislation's authority because the Liberals needed the votes of the separatist Bloc Québécois to win passage. "Because it is being passed with the support of the Bloc, I think it will lack legitimacy for a lot of Canadians," he said in a televised interview.

The Liberals shot back that the Conservatives had made a tacit alliance with the Bloc just last month in an effort to call early elections.

It was the latest effort by the two leading parties to gain advantage from an issue that polls show divides the Canadian public down the middle, with younger and urban voters generally in favor of expanding marriage rights and older and rural voters generally against.

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The Conservative Party has placed advertisements opposing the change in community newspapers catering to immigrant communities, which usually vote for the governing Liberals but are socially more conservative than the population at large. Conservative strategists hope they can lure enough votes from the Liberals in immigrant and particularly Muslim suburban communities in southern Ontario to give them a chance to form a government next year.

While hundreds of thousands of people took part in a gay and lesbian parade in Toronto on Sunday, Mr. Harper appeared at a convention of Muslims in nearby Mississauga and spoke out against the marriage legislation.

"Most Canadians believe that the traditional definition of marriage should be recognized," Mr. Harper told the gathering. "If we refuse to speak about this issue, who will stand up and protect your faith and your religion?"

With enactment of the legislation, same-sex couples will be able to marry for the first time in Alberta, Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and the unions of couples who have already married in other jurisdictions will now be recognized everywhere in Canada.

One Liberal junior cabinet member, Joe Comuzzi, who is responsible for development in northern Ontario, resigned in protest rather than vote with the government. But the 158-to 133-vote represented the approval of the vast majority of three of the four parties in the House of Commons.

Before passage, members agreed to an amendment that would protect the charitable status of any religious institution that refuses to perform same-sex marriages.

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A version of this article appears in print on June 29, 2005, on Page A00004 of the National edition with the headline: Gay Marriage Is Extended Nationwide In Canada. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe